Videoguys' DIY9 Sneak Peek: It's Time for Sandy Bridge-E
Videoguys by Gary Bettan
Over the past year Videoguys.com have taken some heat in some online tech forums and communities. We were very late to embrace the original Sandy Bridge processors and even when we did recommend one, it was with some caveats.
We have always been big fans of Sandy Bridge CPUs and the performance value they deliver. For us, the issue has been the motherboards and chipsets. The initial Sandy Bridge X67 motherboard had some very serious PCIe bandwidth issues. These were addressed, but even when the improved X68 based motherboards shipped, we still had concerns. Sure they were okay for running NLE software, but add-in an I/O device like the Matrox MXO2 Mini and some RAID storage and you could very well run into bottlenecks. When I shared these concerns with my contacts at Avid, Adobe, Matrox and other vendors, they confirmed my suspicions and said they too would not be certifying X67 or X68 motherboards. We all agreed - we had to wait for an enthusiast level chipset from Intel, one that was a worthy successor to the X58 we used for years in our DIY8 builds.
Videoguys now recommends the Sandy Bridge-E processor with X79 chipset!
Intel Delivers with X79 Chipset!
When I first read about the new Sandy Bridge-E chips and the X79 motherboards on Tom's hardware, I knew they would be a winner for video editing. The only question for me was when would they be shipping? Then I read a great review of the ASUS P9X79 Pro on Anandtech in November 2011 and I knew it was time for DIY9. Here are just a few of the highlights of the Asus P9X79 family of motherboards:
- 40 PCIe lanes and PCIe 3 support
- Quad-channel memory w 8 DIMM slots
- USB3, eSata 6 Gbps
- ASUS Graphical GUI for easy Overclocking
Unfortunately, with it being the busy holiday season and end of the year, we will not get started on this machine until at least January 2012. I realize that with the new Avid Media Composer 6, Adobe CS5.5 Production Premium, Sony Vegas Pro 11 and the Grass Valley Edius 6 at a special low crossgrade price, many of you want to get started now. So I'm going to but together our parts list, with the disclaimer that we have not built or tested any DIY9 machines yet. If you're one of the brave and decide to get started before us we welcome your feedback and suggestions!
Leave a comment